When China Met Africa

When China Met Africa (2011)

A cinematic feature documentary about China's foray into Africa told through the lives of Chinese adventurers & Zambian power brokers as they negotiate the tricky waters of this rapidly expanding and vital relationship.

Date of release
2011-10-07
TMDB
5.4 / 10 (4)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Nick Francis, Marc J. Francis

Interesting facts

When China Met Africa is a 2010 documentary film by Nick Francis and Marc James Francis. Set on the front line of Chinaʼs foray into Africa, it follows the lives of a Chinese farmer, a road builder, and the Zambian trade minister.

Production

During the production of Black Gold, Marc Francis and Nick Francis encountered a group of Chinese workers building a road in southern Ethiopia. This meeting sparked questions about China's role as a growing rising superpower.

A few years later, the crew arrived in Zambia in the midst of Presidential elections, where the Zambian opposition leader was campaigning on an anti-Chinese platform. Filming became increasingly difficult during this time, but over the next few months, the film crew had extensive meetings with more than a hundred Chinese people living and working in Zambia including construction managers, restaurant owners, farmers, travel agents, labourers, CEO'…

One of the main difficulties that was raised during the production was the multitude of dialects spoken by people appearing in the film, which made understanding problematic. The crew often did not know what their characters were saying until reading the transcripts upon their return to the UK.

It was pitched at Sheffield Doc/Fest's 2007 MeetMarket.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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